Nicole D. Porter﻿﻿

﻿﻿Nicole D. Porter is the Director of Advocacy at The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization engaged in research and advocacy for criminal justice reform. Nicole holds a Master's Degree in Public Affairs from the LBJ School at University of Texas at Austin. Her master's thesis explored self-employment strategies for formerly incarcerated African Americans. Nicole is the former director of the Texas ACLU’s Prison & Jail Accountability Project (PJAP). The project’s mission was to monitor the conditions of confinement in Texas jails and prisons. Nicole advocated in the Texas legislature to promote felony enfranchisement reforms, to address prison rape, and improve prison medical care. Previously, Nicole worked for the Appleseed Foundation, National Women’s Political Caucus, and the American Prospect Magazine. She was named a "New Civil Rights Leader" by Essence Magazine in November 2014 for her work to eliminate mass incarceration.

Nicole was born in Houston and has lived in Austin, Baltimore and Accra, Ghana. Nicole was politicized around mass incarceration when she noticed in her late teens and early twenties that many of the young men she grew up with were either in prison or under some form of supervision. She currently resides in Washington, D.C.